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our {in}fertility journey | baby 3

well the secret is finally out and it feels so good!!
i can’t believe we’re past 13 weeks… so much has happened and the best part…it was a..s e c r e t!!

as promised… all the details. so many people have been so kindly praying for us and asking about our journey… so, here it is! strap on your boots, friend, it’s gonna get deep!

we have always wanted a bigger family and were never sure the journey we would be on or if we would be able to get pregnant again. the girls were such a blessing… we never have taken that for granted and knew we would have to trust where god was sending us.
i’ve been ready for more babes since we got out of survival mode which was about when the girls turned one, but because of how we have to get pregnant, it does take some planning. so one day, zach came home and said, ‘i’m ready again.’… i kinda looked at him with a blank stare as he handed me a beer and cheers’ed to ‘getting pregnant.’
we decided that day that we wanted to surprise our family and friends… so we kept the biggest secret of our lives! going through the process getting pregnant with the girls was hard. so many tears. so many ups and downs. we really needed our family to get us through the tests, the procedures, pokes and prods. but this time was different. we felt like god had been leading us down this path…and while the path god leads us down don’t always lead to ‘happy endings’, we knew we would be okay this time, whatever the outcome.

2 1/2+ years have passed since we last started this crazy journey of infertility and while i was so ready to get going again… it was kind of scary. we started with a battery of tests to make sure we were going through with the right steps again. it was all too familiar, which was eerily comforting.

life with a donor

we got confirmation that we would be using a donor again and were thrilled when we realized that we would be able to use the same person. i thought it would be easier after going through it once already, knowing we don’t ever look at the girls as not ‘our own’… but i think we would be lying if we said it still wasn’t hard. no one gets married and hopes for a donor to be a part of their life..but, it’s reality for some. i have met so many wonderful people on this journey and when zach and i were talking about how much to share this time around, we ultimately decided that if we can help one couple to not feel alone…it was worth it.
so anyways, same donor.

infertility tests

a week after day 1 of my cycle, we did a SHG which was very similar to the HSG. it’s basically an ultrasound with saline that looks at your uterine cavity to make sure all looked well and i’d be ready to have a successful pregnancy. all was clear and we got the go ahead to move forward with treatments.

fertility meds

#fertility problems.. you may be in fertility treatments if… see above. this was a miracle. after struggling to find a good concoction of meds as we were trying for the girls, we ultimately ended up using injectable meds used for in-vitro fertilization. luckily, i responded well to those meds, but they weren’t fun to administer, weren’t fun from an emotional stand-point…and while we wanted healthy babies, we were 100% welcoming to the idea of having twins. this time… our ‘goal’ was to have just one healthy babe. we have to balance our finances with the process and we don’t have unlimited funds to just go through cycle by cycle, so we ultimately decided to give one round of femara (a low-level drug) a chance to see what happened. while i never responded to femara before, i actually wound up with one really good looking egg!! it wasn’t super great, but it was good enough for me to beg to go through with the IUI (intrauterine insemination) and while the doc wasn’t super thrilled with our chances, we figured we’d give it a shot!!

iui

if you’ve been through infertility treatments… you know how precise everything has to be… the whole process is medical, which honestly helps me to focus on the science part of it all. so i triggered with ovidrel and 24 hours later we went in for the insemination. while we didn’t grace the doctors with ‘let’s get it on’ playing in the background like we did last time, we did still get some chuckles in at the oddity of having our daughters in the room while i got knocked up. you gotta have a good laugh in there somehow!

the waiting

one of the tricky parts to all of this is because i take a second shot of ovidrel after the insemination, is that it basically tricks your body into thinking it’s pregnant…so unfortunately {or fortunately as we found out!} when taking a pregnancy test, you get a false positive.
so i’m not the most patient person in the entire world when it comes to information like ‘are we pregnant..?’ and while i really didn’t think i was, i took daily pregnancy tests to track my hcg.. essentially, when i first started taking them, i was ‘very pregnant’…the line showed up as soon as i peed on it, but as the days went on, that line took longer and longer to show up and was fainter and fainter to eventually, it was barely there at all. i actually told zach we weren’t pregnant and here’s to hoping next month works. the next day, i took the test expecting for nothing to show up, and i happened to look back at the pregnancy test and the thing was as clear as day, positive. i had all 9 tests lined up on my window frame in the window and looked like a crazy person. i may or may not have lost it a little and called the office immediately to explain my own little science experiment. apparently it made sense and by the afternoon i was in for bloodwork.

postive : you’re pregnant!

the angels they call ‘nurses’ squeezed me in and got my bloodwork to the lab in time to be processed that day…so i cussed at the 6 people who had to call me while i patiently waited for the nurse to call me. i know the number by heart and think i answered the phone with something along the lines of… am i crazy? it didn’t work, did it? to which she practically screamed back at me, ‘you’re pregnant!!!!!!!’
i cried the happiest of ugly cries… i just couldn’t believe it.
the first try. the first vile. with such little meds. we have a baby.
we sat down at dinner and i just looked at zach and spilled the news…we’re pregnant. he kinda laughed and just replied, ‘i knew it.’

so there we were. celebrating as a family of four that would soon be five… another blessing and we just couldn’t be more excited.

we slowly announced to each of our family members our exciting news and had a blast telling each one in our own way. it took everyone by such surprise that it took some time to sink in. another babe to love and welcome into our crazy amazing families…

oh you sweet, sweet babe, you are so loved already.

if you ever find yourself somewhere along this crazy journey, know you aren’t alone. ALWAYS feel free to shoot me an email or reach out and say ‘hi’ if you need some company!

My husband and I fostered and adopted two of our children and then I did a third round of IVF and I got pregnant with our daughter. She is now 6. My husband and I have always wanted a fourth baby, but now my husband does not produce any sperm. The only option we have is using a donor. My husband is not completely on board with this. He said he would pray about it and do some reading on it. However, when I research online, it’s hard to find a man’s perspective on this. It’s always the women talking about it. How did your husband feel? Was it instant love when your children were born? Did your husband develop a good bond with your children? I know that I would, but my husband feels funny about it.